be remembered that these races were over tracks that 

 were very sandy, and as a general thing not in first- 

 class condition. I concluded to winter my horses in 

 Montgomery, Ala., that winter, so as to get them in 

 good condition for the next season's campaign ; and 

 as I had done so well with Mattie Hunter, her owner 

 concluded to leave her in my hands to winter, and to 

 campaign the next season. The weather was quite 

 warm, and the roads and track were soft, and very 

 favorable for jogging horses. I took the shoes off 

 Mattie Hunter after her fall campaign, and jogged her 

 barefooted nearly all winter. She did not require any 

 boots in jogging, and scarcely any at all in her races. 

 While working her barefooted one day in the early 

 spring I drove her a quarter of a mile to a high- 

 wheeled sulky in thirty seconds, a feat I have never 

 known to be equaled by any horse. She came out 

 in the spring of 1879 ^^ splendid condition, and I 

 believed her good enough to go in any company. 

 While pacing races up to that time had not been 

 favored at the great race meetings of the North, 

 it so happened that season that there were a number 

 of fast pacers being worked and developed in different 

 parts of the country, among them being Blind Tom, 

 Rowdy Boy, Lucy, Sleepy George, and others. The 

 newspapers had printed so much about the ex- 

 treme speed each of these horses could show, that the 

 public clamored for their appearance in contests at 

 the different large race meetings, and public opinion 

 demanded of the different associations in the Grand 

 Circuit that purses sufficiently large be offered to ac- 

 complish their appearance ; and yielding to this de- 

 mand, the associations did offer very liberal purses for 

 a class of free-for-all pacers. I knew that the horses to 



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